There was some unfortunate news coming out of the Caribbean this past couple days. Basically, American Airlines is making some drastic changes to try and stay afloat in the new world economy with the current fuel prices. We knew that they were going to cut their flights to the Caribbean, we were just not sure how much and when. Remember I blogged a few months ago about Spirit Airlines come September going to a Saturday only flight down to St Thomas which i thought would make it more difficult for inexcpensive flights?
American Airlines/American Eagle, which we are tied pretty tightly to down here is cutting their flights to and from San Juan from about 38 a day at least to 18. This is not going to affect the flights from Miami, but apparently, it will affect mostly direct flights to SJU from gateways behind MIami. They will be laying off several hundred people in SJU. Additionally, they are cutting back the flights that go from San Juan to the islands in the caribbean from about 55 a day to 33.
This is going to make it much harder in many respects for guests:
1) cost
2) availability
3) Getting to the Caribbean without an overnight stop SOMEWHERE, maybe even our dreaded airport (gosh I hope they hurry up and finish it!) Miami will be nigh impossible.
4) Those who are used to using FF miles, they can forget it, remember me telling the story last week of using 120,000 "anytime" miles to come back and when our flights messed up right from Tortola, to go first class we would have had to wait days and go through Boston?
They will no longer offer non flight service to SJU from Fort Lauderdale, Newark, Orlando, Los Angeles and Washington Dulles. They will still offer non stop, but with a reduced schedule from (ie once a week on peek days instead of several times a week) from Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami, New York, JFK, Philadelphia and Hartford.
They have also announced that they will ground their fleet of 34 seats Saab, and shift around some of their 72 seaters back to the states that we use in the caribbean.
We will just have to see what will shake out here. A few thoughts, yes, there are other airlines, we will see what their schedule does. This will make our ferries from St Thomas over to the BVI busier, and our airport less busy. The fare is already quite a bit higher to come into Beef Island then St Thomas. Perhaps someone will step up to fill this niche, although I don't believe it will be LIAT as they are cutting their schedule as well.
As I said in my last post, that makes it even more important to WORK with us on the logistics of getting back and forth to the islands. We are good at that! I also would suggest that if you have charters booked to the BVI, or indeed anywhere in the Caribbean this coming winter, that you "don't wait until fall when prices are supposed to fall" to buy your tickets. At least you will have a ticket, but be prepared that they are probably going to change your schedule a billion times on the plane before then. Expect costs to be higher down here then you saw before, our transportation costs of items are going up daily. When talking to boats at the last show, they all talked about sailing more and not running engines as much. It will be good for us. We have a few good things going for us. We work in the American dollar so you do not have to deal with exchange rates!
Enough of that gossip today, I will keep you on to date as things change and we have more information.
